


Senses

by AquaWolfGirl



Series: Aqua's Caltrilla Fics [1]
Category: Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game)
Genre: Cal being a cutie, F/M, No Plot, Otherwise Tooth Rotting Sweetness, Sexual References, Some Violence/Gore-ish, just musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:48:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22797328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquaWolfGirl/pseuds/AquaWolfGirl
Summary: It doesn't take long for Trilla Suduri to take up Cal Kestis's entire world. An exploration of the senses of their relationship in a world where she lives after they rescue her on Nur. A little angsty, a little tooth-rotting, a little tropey.
Relationships: Cal Kestis/Trilla Suduri | Second Sister
Series: Aqua's Caltrilla Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706914
Comments: 9
Kudos: 145





	Senses

**Author's Note:**

> I've been hammering at this one for a while. I love exploring a bit unconventional writing styles, and I had the idea for this one (of course the one that came into my head first was 'taste' and then it was all downhill from there). I had fun just exploring these two without the issue of a plot. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

**Sight** ****

He’s not sure how to describe how he felt the first time he saw her.

There was a level of exhaustion, his muscles burning and aching from the fight. Relief, that he was seeing her through the energy shield instead of head on. She tries, poking at the field with the edge of her saber as he scrambles backwards.

“You’re learning,” she says, as breathless as he is, before she starts to pace. There’s an elegance to her movements he’s not exactly familiar with. Bracca's probably the least elegant planet in the galaxy.

“Cere was never good at keeping secrets,” she croons. He doesn’t like her tone, but he can’t deny the shiver it sends up his spine.

“And you know her so well, huh?”

The mask makes her laughter deeper. More mechanical. He doesn’t like the sound of it.

There’s mention of weakness. Of a torture chair. Of a naïve Padawan.

“They would have never have found me…”

The mask hisses, releasing its grip on the Second Sister’s head.

“… if it wasn’t for her.”

For some reason, he didn’t expect her to be pretty.

But she is. Kriffing hell, she is.

Her voice is even smoother without the mask off, he notices that. He also notices her eyes. For half a second, their lightness makes him think _Sith_ but no, they’re just … light.

To hear her taunt him, to hear _that voice_ morphed by the mask is terrifying. To hear it, to see her plush lips form the words is … something else.

To fight a mask, a cape, a uniform with the symbol of the Empire on it is one thing.

To fight a woman who was betrayed by her own master is different entirely.

* * *

**Smell**

It almost makes him sick. The smell of burnt leather, of burn fabric, of burnt flesh.

But he couldn’t leave her.

She’s barely breathing as he drapes her across one of the beds. Greez seems to realize that this is not the time to be complaining about their soaked clothes and hair dripping water on his ship, instead hovering by as Cal struggles to stay awake himself.

“Move.”

He obeys Cere’s orders, the former Jedi knight sweeping in with bacta. Cal hears the ripping of fabric, sees bare, dark skin just beyond Cere’s shoulder as he leans back against the wall and fights the urge to be sick. The smell only gets worse as Cere rips Trilla’s uniform out of the way, the soaked cape falling to the floor and her jacket and shirt joining it shortly after.

“Do you think she’ll make it?” he asks, watching as Cere makes quick work of bandaging the skin together, applying bacta to soak through the fabric and heal the former Inquisitor properly.

“I don’t know,” Cere confesses.

“Thanks for the honesty,” Cal sighs. It’s not the answer he wants to hear, but at least it’s the truthful one.

The smell continues to linger in his nose even after they’ve maneuvered Trilla onto her front, the bacta-soaked bandages covering the long, uneven scar. It won’t be pretty. But she may live.

He has to wonder if she wants to.

* * *

**Touch**

Despite the odds, and despite nearly all of their hodgepodge crew accepting that they’ll need to find somewhere to bury her by the end of the week, Trilla wakes. It takes a while, but she wakes. And she heals.

And she stays.

It’s weird. He won’t say it isn’t. It’s weird to see her in the galley of the ship, helping Greez chop vegetables to go with some steak he found. There’s a softness to her that wasn’t there before. Maybe it’s the freedom of no longer being in Inquisitor. Maybe it’s hesitation about being on a ship with her former master and the man who defeated her. Maybe it’s something else entirely, he has no idea. She’s closed off, her words as eloquent and striking as ever, but no longer as jeering.

He hears her, sometimes. Talking to Cere, or Merrin. He can’t hear what they’re saying, can’t make out words or even syllables, but he recognizes the lilt of her voice, the deepness of it, her unique accent mixing with Merrin’s.

She wears Cere’s clothes, for the most part, since hers were destroyed when they rushed to give her medical aid. It’s weird to see her in colors other than black. That’s not to say she doesn’t look good in them, because she does. But it’s weird.

It’s even weirder when she starts helping them. When she starts assisting them in finding the remaining Jedi, the few who survived the order. There aren’t many left, but they offer relocation services to those who are left. Those who feel unsafe in their current hideout, those who want a change of scenery.

The first time he touches her, they’re pressed against a cliff face, fronts to the red rock as they make their way towards an old outpost that may still have some supplies. The ledge beneath her left crumbles, and he reaches out, his hand pressing to her lower back to steady her as she clings to the cliff face, moving her foot to somewhere more stable. He can feel the warmth of her through Cere’s shirt, can feel the way she tenses.

She doesn’t thank him. He didn’t expect her to.

The second time he touches her, it’s to put bacta on her arm. A trip back to Zeffo in an attempt to pick up where Cordova left off his research, to go deeper into the lore of the extinct species, resulted in a few scuffles with some scazz and Stormtroopers. The Stormtroopers were easy to wipe out. The pack of about a dozen scazz? Less so.

“Just let me know if I’m hurting you, all right?” he asks, touching at the bite wound. It doesn’t look pretty, now, but it will heal well if they get bacta on it quickly.

“You say that as though this is the worst wound I’ve received,” Trilla taunts, turning her head to look at him with those light eyes that once haunted him. He wouldn’t say they still haunt him, no. They linger, though, in the back of his mind, when he’s supposed to be asleep but the hyperdrive’s just too loud.

A lot of things about her linger in the back of his mind. More than they should.

The next time he touches her, it’s on some backwater ice planet the Zeffo mentioned in another mural he missed the first time he explored the tomb, and somehow Cordova missed, too. It’s not Ilum, there’s no kyber here, but there’s a lot of wind. And snow. And ice.

They’d expected the storm, but they hadn’t expected it to be so intense. To step out into it would result in being swept away, so they stay in the mouth of the small tomb, watching the snow twist and twirl.

“Just a little longer,” Cere tells them, her voice crackling through the comm unit, barely audible over the wind. “I can see it moving east.”

“Thanks, Cere,” Cal replies, his hands numb as he holds the comm. BD-1 beeps his own thanks, the gentle weight of the droid on his shoulder comforting as he tries not to shiver too violently.

“Think you can hang in there?” Cere asks.

“We’ll try,” he says, looking towards Trilla, the former Inquisitor standing with her arms wrapped around herself in an attempt to keep warm. Her eyes are focused on the storm outside, gaze distant as he thanks Cere again and cuts the communication.

He’s never been in a place cold enough to test it, or at least not with someone else, but he knows the general concept of sharing body heat.

“You’re shaking,” he realizes, watching her shoulders quiver. He’s interrupted whatever she was thinking about. She turns her head, those damn eyes staring right through him.

“How observant of you,” she says. Just because she’s usually less jeering, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen occasionally.

Their coats aren’t made to handle the ice and snow, but his is thicker than hers, at the very least. “Come here,” he says, shrugging out of one half of the coat and holding it out, offering to share.

The look she gives him is … a look. He can’t tell whether it’s exasperation, or shock, or something in between. But she steps forward anyway, letting him wrap the coat around her as best as he can.

Eventually they sit, BD-1 a few feet away, still watching the storm. While it’s no warmer sitting, it’s better than standing and having their legs become numb from the cold. The feeling of her against his side is a welcome distraction from the feeling of ice against his back and ass. He can still feel how tense she is, though, everything about her stiff as she stares at the wall ahead.

It’s the closest they’ve ever been, and yet the farthest she’s ever felt.

He expects her to protest when he wraps his arm around her, pulling her further into him, but she doesn’t. She’s still tense, but at the very least she lets him pull her close, and that’s a start.

The wind howls outside, occasionally gusting into their little safe spot. Cal shudders, turning his head towards her, shielding the tender, already reddened skin of his face away from the wind.

“You didn’t need to save me, and yet you did.”

“What?” Cal asks, frowning.

She looks to him, and his breath comes short as those eyes pin him down, staring right into his. “It was your decision to save me, from the Fortress, was it not?” she asks, her voice carefully even and almost as chilly as the ice surrounding them. “It wasn’t Cere’s. It was yours.”

“Yeah,” Cal readily admits. “It was.”

“Why?” she demands.

“I couldn’t just leave you.”

“The chances of my survival were slim, and yet you decided to haul my body back with you.”

“But you did survive,” he insists. “You did survive, and you’re here, and … and you deserve to live the life that was taken from you.”

“A life in hiding, with an absurd bounty on my head, searching for the last remnants of an order the Empire wishes to wipe out entirely,” she says, sounding skeptical.

“All right, when you put it like that,” Cal admits.

He’s not sure that he can call what her lips do a smile. Perhaps a bit of a smirk. It’s something, at the very least, something where the corners of her dark lips curl up. He’ll count it as making her smile, sure.

“You’ve already suffered enough,” he says, waiting until the wind has stopped its howling, if only for a moment.

There’s something she wants to say, he can tell, but she holds her tongue. Instead, he feels her relax into him. It’s not much, but it’s enough that he can feel it.

“She didn’t say how long it would be,” she says. She doesn’t let her voice lilt upwards, but he can tell it’s a question.

“No,” he sighs. He decides to risk a slow and painful, Trilla Suduri-caused death by rubbing his hand up and down her arm, trying to warm her as the clouds of their breath plume out in front of them. “She said a little while longer.”

“Wonderful.”

Her version of sarcasm is more lilting, her voice almost a croon. He’s learned to recognize it after several weeks of sharing a space with her. It’s just one of the things he’s learned to recognize.

It’s a few moments before she scoots even closer. If he wasn’t already hyper-aware of the way she’s pressed against him, he doubts he would have noticed the space closing. But he can feel her shoulder against his side, can feel her hip bump against his, can feel the way she curls in. Though she’s taller than him, just by a bit, she’s significantly more slender, body heat leaving quickly. He keeps the same rhythm of rubbing his arm up and down hers. She’s still wearing Cere’s clothes. They should probably get her some of her own, at some point. Maybe they can convince Greez to let up some of the food budget.

At the very least they need better coats if they’re going to be going to planets like this.

“C’mere,” he mutters. He’s felt her shiver one too many times now, and he pulls her in even closer, arm wrapping around her entirely and tugging her into his chest.

“What are you doing?” she demands. She looks at him. It’s not really a glare, but it’s questioning, and there’s a harshness to it, in the furrow of her brows and the downturn of her lips.

“You’re shivering,” he says simply. “Get closer, it’ll help.”

“You say that as though shivering is an option,” she replies, narrowing her eyes.

“All right, fine, then you’ll shiver less, just get over here,” he says.

Her hand finds his pec, fingers spreading across as she lets herself be pulled in close. She doesn’t curl in, she doesn’t cuddle, he hadn’t expected her to. But she does lean in towards him to be more comfortable, bracing her hand against his chest for balance as he holds her.

And that’s how they spend the next … however long it is. He loses track of time, listening to her breathing and hoping that she can’t feel how his heart keeps skipping whenever she moves. Occasionally he’ll rub at her arm, her side when she shivers, seeing how she reacts, making sure she’s still awake. That’s the most dangerous thing, so he’s heard. Falling asleep in the cold.

But she’s awake when Cere contacts them, giving them the all clear to return to the ship now that the wind storm has settled.

-

The next time he touches her, she's the one who initiates it.

“I know you’re still unfamiliar with the concept of logical thinking,” Trilla hisses, her hand pressed to his side in an attempt to stop the blaster bolt wound from hurting. It doesn’t work. He still grits his teeth, still holds tight to her hand as Merrin deals with the remaining troopers. “But running directly into the line of fire is perhaps the most foolish thing I have ever seen anyone do.”

“Maybe,” Cal groans. “But then you would have been hit. Couldn’t let that happen.”

There's that look again, like the one in the ice cave, the shock and exasperation and whatever else. He expected something like that, at least.

He didn’t expect the kiss. He didn’t expect her to cup the back of his head, didn’t expect her to lean in and plant one on him while they’re somewhat covered in an alleyway of an abandoned village. He can hear the blaster fire, can hear the cries of the troopers as Merrin uses her magic against them. But it all becomes just the background as he feels her lips on his, warm and soft and insistent. He grabs at her arm, holding tight as best as he can with limited movement.

“Idiot,” she whispers against his lips. He chases her mouth, kissing her again, yanking her closer.

“Yeah,” he agrees, breathless before he kisses her more deeply.

Their next kiss is softer. The bacta’s sticky slick and warm against his skin, her body pressed to his in something like desperation as the quiet hum of the ship’s hyperdrive fills the silence between the smacking of their lips. He has a taunt on his tongue, something about her and her heart and not knowing that she cared so much, but he lets it go in favor of tasting her. Her nails dig into his bare shoulders, as though not to let him leave.

Not her side, not this ship, not this world.

He can’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be.

She’s still unsure about the idea of _them_ , that much is clear. Though he tries to take her hand, tries to pull her in, tries to kiss her cheek, she’s distant. Every time, he wonders if she’s second guessing, if she’s reconsidering whether this is a good idea, and then she’ll finally lace her fingers with his.

It’s a progress.

Slowly but surely, he gets to touch more than her hand. There’s the time she slipped and fell in the waters of Kashyyyk, and he put bacta on her back where a rock cut through her shirt. And then he just … kept touching. It heals quickly, and while it does he traces it with his fingers as his lips trace the lines of her collarbone. He’ll never get tired of her fingers in his hair, the way she runs her nails along his scalp, the way she tugs, her way of coaxing him to do more.

She’s not the first woman he’s touched, he’ll admit that. There were a few scrappers on Bracca who sought him out occasionally, and with the Jedi Order and all of its rules pretty much dissolved, he gave in.

Trilla has scars. He can see where some of the torture equipment burned her skin. There’s one on her thigh that he traces constantly, because it’s naturally where his hand slips from her knee up her thigh to her ass. And then of course there’s the big scar, from Vader’s blade, that he strokes over and over and over again as they curl together in his small bunk, the low light of the emergency lights casting them both in sickly yellow but letting him see the jagged skin.

“Why do you touch it so much?” Trilla asks him once, turning over to face him. He loves her like this, when she lets everything down and lets him see her, bare and beautiful. It took a while to get there, sure, but they’re here now, and he’s obsessed with it.

“It’s a reminder,” he admits. “Of what you survived. _That_ you survived.”

“You do know there are other ways of reminding you that I am here, correct?” she teases, smirking as she pushes him onto his back and moves to straddle him. His hands come to her hips, thumbs feeling the jut of bone as she leans back a little, letting him see up her body.

“I know,” he replies.

After everything, he still touches the scar, when she’s fast asleep against his chest, both satisfied and slightly sticky. Because though it means reliving that moment over and over with the psychometry, feeling the fire up his own back as she had felt it, feeling that pit of dread in his stomach, there’s something else there, too.

There’s a little bit of her hope at the beginning of the memory. Hope that she’d leave with them, join them. Join him.

And that’s worth all the rest.

* * *

**Taste**

He’s not ashamed to say he’s become addicted to the taste of her. All of her. He finds himself chasing the rivulets of sweat along her chest and collarbone after they’ve trained together, both of them simultaneously exhausted and lit up like a live wire. He kisses her every chance he gets, because he still can’t believe they’re here and they’re doing this - or, more accurately, she’s letting him do this. They’ve come so far, and to suckle on her lower lip and feel her fingers in his hair is a very clear reminder of just what they’ve been through.

But tasting her release is probably his favorite.

Sweet. A little bitter. He hadn’t used his mouth on someone before, not even on Bracca. Bracca was quick, in and out, sating rather than truly satisfying. It wasn’t a great place for exploring someone else’s body.

The first time he tastes her, it’s in the common room of the ship, on the sofa Greez tries so hard to keep clean. The hyperdrive is humming around them, the stars flying by as she braces her thighs on his shoulders, her ankles hooking behind his back. He’s never been this close to a girl, at least not in this way, and he takes so long just looking at her and touching her that she tugs at his hair to let him know she wants more than just curious strokes and swipes.

She guides him. He knows a little bit, heard the lewd jokes and comments of some of the other scrappers, has been in a few cantinas now to know that sucking and swirling can illicit a reaction. She doesn’t ‘howl’ like one of the scrappers said, but there’s a sharp inhale of breath as he sucks on the little bud he finds, and he takes that as a good sign.

He should brush his teeth afterwards, or at the very least rinse his mouth. But she doesn’t mind tasting herself on his lips, and he likes waking up to it.

He’s all too eager to feel her thighs cupping his ears again, especially when she kneels over him and braces her hands against the durasteel wall as he tilts his face up to her.

He doesn’t realize how much of a … well, it’s not a problem, it’s the opposite of a problem, but he doesn’t realize how obsessed he’s become with it until Merrin tells him he has something shining on his nose the moment he walks into the common room one morning. Sure, it was slightly mortifying, but he’d much rather Merrin notice it than Cere or Greez.

That doesn’t mean he’s going to stop, though. Not in the slightest.

There are several things he likes about it. There’s an element of trust, to have his face so close to her. That she’s letting him pleasure her in this way speaks volumes.

That, and it’s the only time he’s heard her moan, and damn it, he’s going to make her do it again.

Trilla isn’t loud. Though she’s all for dramatics and flair and show outside of the bedroom, he has to work for her reactions inside of it. Which is just fine with him. He’s never been one to back down from a challenge, and she’s constantly challenging him.

She reacts in other ways, sure. Her thighs clenching around his head, the way her fingers clutch at his hair, her nails scraping against his shoulders, his scalp. He loves the way she shakes, the way every bit of her lean body tenses before she relaxes. It’s the only time he sees her well and truly relax, which is yet another reason why he loves it. She becomes warmer, softer, clinging to him and kissing him with enough force to knock him backwards, her teeth and tongue eager always.

But she’s rarely loud.

So, he’ll just keep tasting her until she is.

* * *

**Sound**

“Cal Kestis.”

It’s exasperated after he comes back to the Mantis from a tomb covered in vines and webs from some creature.

“Cal Kestis.”

It’s sighed in relief as he turns to her, blade still drawn and sweat on his brow after defeating a half dozen troopers.

“Cal!”

It’s yelled as she holds out her hand, waiting for him to throw her one half of his lightsaber. They fight back to back, and when it’s all over, they’re surrounded by fauna and fallen Imps, their breath heavy and bodies still tense.

“Cal.”

It’s said warningly as he makes his move against Merrin in Dejarik. He gets no sympathy from the former Inquisitor as Merrin’s monster annihilates his, Trilla laughing as Merrin’s Savrip picks up and tosses his Ghhhk.

“Cal!”

Her body arches, beautiful in the low always-on-no-matter-what emergency lights of what’s now their room.

“Cal Kestis…”

He likes this one the best. The rare treat that only comes after hours of touch, of taste. It’s a sigh, falling from plush, dark lips. She breathes it like she can’t believe she’s saying it, like she can’t believe she’s here, let alone that he made her release so hard she cried out. It’s almost chiding, but not entirely.

It’s more than his name. It’s a ‘look at us now.’

While his name from her mouth is his favorite thing to hear, her name from his mouth are his favorite thing to say.

“Yeah, Trilla Kestis?”


End file.
